


The madness of Max Richman

by idinathoreau



Series: SPRQ Remote [1]
Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: Am I?, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Lockdown Fic, because gay, everyone is bored in lockdown, except Max, expect a part 2 from the girl's pov, leif is just along for the ride, max tries to be a detective, no, should I be working on Tech Conference, the girls may or may not know what they're doing, tobin is creepy out of context, told from Max's POV because humor, two people are stuck together because of lockdown and oops they caught feels, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29872977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idinathoreau/pseuds/idinathoreau
Summary: It all started with a coffee cup. Then he felt like he was losing his damn mind.OrMax is in lockdown and starts to notice things in Zoey's apartment via Zoom.
Relationships: Tobin Batra & Leif Donnelly, Zoey Clarke & Max Richman, Zoey Clarke/Joan
Series: SPRQ Remote [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2196342
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	The madness of Max Richman

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from juliaking713 on Tumblr (they did not specifically send it to me but I adopted it anyway)
> 
> I’m playing fast and loose with the timeline here…I believe that season 1 canonically is in 2020 (but their world doesn’t have covid so…) but let us pretend that it was actually 2019 (when it was filmed) and season 2 begins right around lockdown time? Cool? Everyone good? Oh also, Max still works for SPRQ Point because reasons.
> 
> Now enjoy your quarantined-together fic.
> 
> Told from Max’s POV because I love making him suffer.

It all started with a coffee cup.

That in and of itself wasn’t so unusual. Max just happened to notice that Zoey had two mugs on the table behind her while they were on the 4th Floor logistics call to work out their Zoom protocols during lockdown. He didn’t think much of it (maybe she’d just had multiple cups of coffee that day or hadn’t washed yesterday’s mug) and quickly forgot the little detail.

Until a few days later. 

Zoey had called the entire floor together for a Zoom update on Chirp logistics. She was seated on her couch, the same one that they’d sat together on so many times for movie nights. But as Zoey leaned off camera to grab something, his eyes fell on a college hoodie draped across the back of the couch. From MIT. 

That had caught his attention. Zoey hadn’t attended MIT. She was a USC graduate. 

It bothered him incessantly. He’d resolved to ask her about it later. With lockdown underway, there was no way it belonged to a potential suitor or a visiting friend…maybe she’d found it at a thrift store?

But no, he knew all of Zoey’s sweaters (every loud, colorful, delightfully nerdy sweater imaginable) and there was no way she’d gone shopping in the three weeks since lockdown began. 

That sweater haunted him.

But he finally convinced himself that he was just being paranoid and tried to get on with working from his empty apartment. 

The next week, he and Zoey finally managed to set up a Discord server so they could continue their traditional movie nights sans Zoey’s couch. It was a bit of normalcy, now that this was apparently their lives. 

But about halfway through the classic workplace comedy _Office Space_ , Zoey leaned off-screen. Max swore he heard someone else’s voice.

“Who are you talking to?” he demanded, pausing their movie.

“Huh? Oh, no one.” Zoey insisted, popping back into frame. “Sorry, I was just…uh muttering to myself.” But there was a satisfied little smirk on her face as she momentarily muted the call and leaned off camera again.

Later that night, tossing and turning in bed, the sweater came back with a vengeance as Max recalled a useless piece of information from years past. 

He bolted upright.

_Joan_. Joan had gone to MIT.

So had she given Zoey the sweater? Why?

He stood and paced in the increasingly too-small bedroom, turning over that revelation in his mind. 

Was Joan staying with Zoey? But that wasn’t possible. Joan was in Singapore. She’d taken her promotion and left not a day before the governor declared the state locked down. She’d been on a call the first week, the Singapore skyline visible behind her. She’d complained about the food and the size of her apartment.

Well, he finally reasoned. Maybe Joan had just gifted Zoey the sweater before she’d left? She’d probably needed to get rid of a lot of things before picking up her whole life and moving across the world.

That conclusion was enough to finally allow him to drop off to sleep.

But then, like they had been waiting for him to notice, the clues got bigger.

Namely, the interruption of a check-in with the entire floor and Joan to see how Zoey’s new leadership was going by an enormous German Shepard leaping up onto Zoey’s lap. 

“Whoa! Hey!” Zoey cried, laughing slightly as the big dog began licking her face. Max stared in disbelief as Zoey wrapped her arms around the beast like it was her dearest companion. 

“Zoey…since when do you have a dog?” Max demanded, interrupting Joan’s discussion with Simon about remote marketing concerns.

All of the little Zoom faces perked up, honing in on the new drama. Tobin even put down his phone. “I…I don’t.” Zoey admitted, stroking the panting dog’s head. “He’s uh…this is Tomford. He’s…Joan’s dog.” She seized him by the collar as he pushed forward and sniffed at her laptop, his nose enormous on the screen. “Tomford! No!” Zoey laughed as the dog barked.

“Why do you have Joan’s dog?” Leif asked as Zoey pulled the pooch back from her camera.

“I didn’t have the chance to get him to Singapore before lockdown.” Joan interrupted. “Zoey offered to take him in for me. Can we get back to business?”

Zoey apologized and shooed the big dog away. Her smile lasted throughout the rest of the call and she kept glancing off-camera and smiling at something. 

Max assumed it was the dog. But then, as they were saying their farewells, he saw that once again, there were two coffee mugs on Zoey’s kitchen table. 

The next week, Joan was wearing an MIT hoodie during the company financials meeting. She claimed it was because her heat had gone out.

Max almost threw his computer across the room.

“I feel like I’m going crazy…” He lamented, during the Engineering Mixer. Zoey had been invited but she’d begged off, claiming Zoom fatigue. “But this is really bothering me…”

“You mean how Joan and Zoey are coordinating wardrobes now?” Tobin asked.

His ears immediately perked up. “What are you talking about?”

“Leif and I get bored during meetings so we started keeping track of how many different shirts people are rotating.” Tobin explained. 

“We’re up to 4 for you.” Leif cut in, smirking.

Max shifted. He hadn’t thought it was noticeable. It just wasn’t worth wearing more when he was doing laundry in his sink.

“No, what are you talking about regarding Zoey and Joan coordinating wardrobes…?”

“Oh right! Leif, wanna read off the stats?”

Leif proceeded to list off outfits, claiming that in the span of two weeks in April, Zoey and Joan had shared 5 sweaters, 4 blouses, 2 hair accessories and 1 necklace.

Max’s head was spinning by the end of it. “Oh my god…”

“You okay dude?” Leif asked, leaning forward slightly. “The isolation getting to you?”

The evidence was all coming together. But he didn’t like the conclusion.

“Okay this is gonna sound weird but…” He hesitated. “has anyone ever seen, anyone else on camera with Zoey? Since" he gestured around him, "all _this_ happened?”

Tobin raised his hand. “Oh yeah, I did.”

“Who?” Max demanded. "When?"

“I couldn’t be sure…it was some woman a couple weeks ago. Maybe her mom?”

“Zoey hasn’t seen her mom in person since lockdown began.” Max informed him, his brain racing. “she didn’t want to risk it ‘cause Maggie’s helping David and Emily with the new baby.”

“Okay so…” Leif began, glancing between his video feeds. “…Zoey’s got a housemate?”

“It’s Joan.” Max declared. It had to be.

“Dude…nah.” Tobin laughed. “Why…why would they be _living_ together? And didn’t Joan move? To Singapore?”

“She was supposed to. Maybe she never left…”

“But why?” Leif asked, finally sounding fully invested. “Joan doesn’t make mistakes, she would have made it to Singapore. And if she didn’t, why would she be staying with Zoey?” He paused, frowning. “You don’t think…?”

“That Zoey is hooking up with our hot boss?” Tobin nodded. “Definite possibility bro.”

Max blanched. Well, _now_ he was thinking it. “Why would you say that?! Zoey wouldn’t do that!”

“I’m just sayin’ bro, if I were locked in somewhere with Joan, I’d probably eventually want to bang her too.” Tobin’s eyes widened. “Oh wow…same applies to Zoey. Or even you for that matter.”

Max pushed that comment aside. He was already lonely and worked up enough that he did not want to go there. Especially with Tobin. “The point is, this is driving me crazy and I need an answer…”

Tobin grinned. “Leif and I got you, bro. We’re on it.”

“Outfit bingo was starting to get boring.” Leif admitted. “I’m in.”

He wasn’t about to say no to help. Trying to wrap his head around this alone was torturous enough that he was actually considering teaming up with them.

“Okay…so how do we prove that they aren’t living together?”

It took them two weeks to finally get Joan on another Zoom call. Max watched intently as Zoey talked animatedly about the next phase of their project, trying to see if she glanced off camera to anyone. Leif had insisted on watching Joan for similar nuances. 

Tobin was doing his own thing. 

At the end of the call, the three of them stayed on.

“Okay, what do we have?”

“Joan looks pretty isolated.” Leif supplied, rubbing his eyes. “No shadows moving behind her, barely any glances off camera…and I went through the archival footage last night, pretty much the same there.”

“Well, while you two were staring at our bosses, I was actually working.” Tobin shared his screen. “Behold: my espionage.”

Max stared at the screen-grabbed images from the call. “Okay…am I supposed to be impressed that you know how print screen works?”

“Dude, you seriously have no imagination…” Tobin pulled up more windows. “I’ve been checking Joan’s background. Now, it’s definitely a Singapore view.” He clicked around, “But, the lighting never seems to change even when she's on calls at different times. And, there's daylight outside her window when she's on calls with us...that's supposed to be 10pm Singapore time. Then I ran an cross-reference analysis to determine approximate location and found the address.”

“Okay, creepy but go on.”

Tobin pulled open a map. “Well…according to the results, Joan’s looking at the city from inside Bishan-Ang Mo Kio park.”

Max blinked. “What?”

“Specifically from the dead center looking west.” Tobin clarified. 

“So either Joan’s homeless and doing her conferences from the park…” Leif began, “or it’s just an image she found online that she’s using to throw us off.”

Max’s head was whirling. Another piece of proof that Joan wasn’t in Singapore. But that still didn’t mean she and Zoey were…?

“Okay…okay…so now what?” He asked them. “Because even through Zoom, I’m too terrified to confront Joan with this kind of accusation.”

“Well, don’t look at us.” Leif insisted. “We’re not up for confrontation.”

“So clearly there’s only one logical explanation here…” Tobin grinned. “We need to hack Joan’s Zoom and turn off her background image.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s the only solution we can come up with?”

“…Yeah…”

Max sighed. “Okay then. Leif, can you get on that?”

It was another full week before Joan was back on a call. And it took Leif a solid twenty minutes to finally hack Joan’s camera. 

_“I hope you realize the creepy implications of this…”_ Leif messaged Max in Slack as he worked. 

Max decided not to call out Tobin’s probably illegal image analysis to point out the hypocrisy. 

But then Leif was finally in and Joan’s background image flickered and faded. 

Max gripped his laptop screen tightly, staring. 

“It’s Zoey’s wall…” He told them after the call ended. He felt faint. 

“What?”

“Joan’s got Zoey’s wall behind her!” Max insisted. 

“Dude, how do you know that?” Tobin asked. “Who’s the stalker now?”

“I’ve been inside her apartment a lot!”

“So? Leif and I see each other everyday and I don’t know all the walls in his apartment.”

“Okay, why are you two seeing each other during _lockdown_?”

“Chill bro. We’re being safe. Leif’s the only one I’ve had contact with for weeks.”

Leif was blushing slightly and fiddling with something off camera.

“Okay…okay…” Max ran his hands through his hair, his brain feeling fried. “I…I need to call Zoey…”

He hung up on them before they could respond. 

But just as he texted Zoey, a Facetime call request appeared on his computer. 

Taking a short, sharp breath, he answered. 

“Hey Max! We still on for…”

“Zoey, I know Joan is living with you.”

Zoey blinked at him. “Why…would you think that…?” her innocent expression was almost enough to convince him he was wrong. 

But he knew he wasn’t. “Trust me…I have evidence.”

Zoey stared for a long moment. Then she smirked. “Wow, you really are just that bored in lockdown, huh?”

_“I heard some people are picking up hobbies, you ever consider trying sewing?”_

Max froze as the dry voice approached and a new figure joined Zoey on camera. 

_I knew it._

Joan waved at him. “Hey Max.” She sat next to Zoey, far too close.

“What…what are you doing in Zoey’s apartment?” Max demanded. 

“Joan got stranded…her flight was cancelled last minute and Singapore wasn’t taking US passengers.” Max stared at Zoey’s hand, now casually resting on Joan’s knee. 

“My house was already sold and I had no where to go.” Joan continued, her hand moving to cover Zoey's. 

“And I was living at home…until I wasn’t.”

“So we’ve been locked in together…”

“For about 3 months now…”

Max glanced between them, unnerved that they seemed to be able to finish each other’s sentences. “And you didn’t tell me because…?”

Zoey seemed confused at his reaction. “Because we didn’t want the entire floor to know that Joan’s still state-side and hovering over my shoulder while I try to take over her job?”

“It was fun to mess with you all.” Joan deadpanned, shrugging. “Lockdown is boring as hell.” She threw a casual arm around Zoey’s shoulder and pulled her closer. “There’s only so many superhero movies I can watch.”

Zoey smiled at her.

It was then that Max saw the lettering across Zoey’s hoodie. And the lipstick stain on her cheek. 

“Wait…wait…” He leaned closer to his camera, staring as hard as he could. “Are you two… _together_?” His voice had become a squeak by the end.

Zoey and Joan exchanged a glance and Max’s heart thumped loudly as a timid smile crossed Zoey’s face. 

“Well you can hardly blame us, can you?” Joan finally replied, still looking at Zoey. “It’s a lonely time. And Zoey’s a very persuasive women…” She planted a firm kiss on Zoey’s temple that had the coder squirming. The action left a twin mark to the one on Zoey’s cheek. Then Joan stared straight into the camera. “Bye now Max…we need to get to bed…” Joan closed the laptop and Max was left staring at his own dumbfounded expression on his empty computer screen.

“…the fu-?”

Lockdown. Of all the things in the universe to cause him to lose his chance with Zoey, it had been a freaking lockdown that shattered his chances.

* * *

Zoey turned in Joan’s grip as the older woman closed the computer. “Did you really need to antagonize him like that?” She teased, sticking her tongue out. Joan’s hoodie was soft and warm and far too big on her. 

“Yes.” Joan snapped back. Her hold had loosened but her hands were still on Zoey’s sides. “I’m bored, you’re cute, and I love to see him squirm. No harm in it. It’s not like we’re actually _together_.”

“Fine have your fun…” Zoey replied, cheeks coloring. Her eyes darted down and then back up. “would-would be pretty crazy if we actually got together after all that huh?”

Joan’s eyes dropped and didn’t move back up. “Yeah…” She mumbled. “It would be…” her face was inches from Zoey’s.

Zoey didn’t want to move. “Joan…we…we should…go to bed…” She protested, the words becoming softer and breathier as Joan didn’t move. 

“Yeah…” Joan breathed, her face falling closer. “We should…”

They didn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> I love torturing Max. It’s so cathartic.


End file.
